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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27868089">white moves first</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandvictories/pseuds/athousandvictories'>athousandvictories</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the queen's gambit [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Queen's Gambit (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(Resentful) Pining, Character Study, Ep06 Flashbacks, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Post-Canon, Sexual Tension, Substance Abuse, There's absolutely a lot of it but it's like subtly done ok, also sex, or Enemies?</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:27:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,648</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27868089</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/athousandvictories/pseuds/athousandvictories</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>It wasn’t like <i>that</i> at all. </p>
  <p>She had suspected, long before Benny Watts, that sex was worth trying. It followed logically from the way people acted about it. </p>
</blockquote>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Beth Harmon/Benny Watts</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>the queen's gambit [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2055918</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>349</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>white moves first</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>switches between introspection/present time/flashback. unintelligible? let me know how to Write Better in the comments :D</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It wasn’t like<em> that</em> at all. </p><p>She had suspected, long before Benny Watts, that sex was worth trying. It followed logically from the way people acted about it. Why would they make such fools of themselves if it weren't? Why would they sacrifice dignity to paw at each other in bars and cars and dimly lit libraries? Why would they agree to marry each other? (Beth finds the idea appalling.)</p><p>Yes, she had suspected, <em>expected</em>, even.  Had thought it worth some perseverance, to get it right. </p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>Benny is sitting two tables away and pretending not to have seen her. Playing lazy, tournament-evening chess with someone she's seen before and doesn't really know, fingers flickering as he switches his glass from hand to hand between moving his pieces. </p><p>She drags her eyes deliberately back down to the Ilya Maizelis in her right hand and the Earl Grey in her left. The bar is right there; if she looks at him for long enough to strike a spark she'll throw a bottle of champagne on the blaze. </p><p>She’d like to say she hasn't touched a drink since beating Borgov (the first time, in 68). She has though, has started and stopped raggedly, the way heavy fabric tears. She’s seven months sober today. Nearly a personal record.</p><p>She realizes with a bit of nausea that she hasn't yet gone that long without fucking Benny. <em>Christ.</em></p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>She'd been confident sex would be good, eventually. Had tried to dig the good out of it, with college-boys and chess-boys and Harry with his eager hands (who was both). Had watched it happen to her from somewhere off to the side, like watching a film. So far, the lighting had been poor, the action stunted, the actors nothing particularly special. The director would have been crucified at Cannes. (Beth had begun to favor the term since Chess Review had written it about her 71' win at the U.S. Championship: <em>Beth Harmon crucified her initial opponents, but the gory display was brought to an end with cleaner fourth-round wins against Allen and Watts.</em> It would have had Christian Crusade squirming in their armchairs.)</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>Beth re-crosses her ankles, right-over-left instead of left-over-right, deliberately refusing to fidget. There's something about hotels with their soft lighting and gentle background noise that makes them feel like noplace, notime. Like she’s a protagonist surrounded by extras, waiting for the action sequence.</p><p>Benny slips up at the same time she does, and his eyes catch on hers.</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>She had been surprised, that first time, looking down at her arm in his hand, (<em>do you still like my hair?</em>) but not averse. She had been game, as far as a spectator could be. </p><p>He had kissed her for a while (the languid kisses of a man with alcohol rounding the sharp edges off his urgency), and she had observed: the dampness of kissing in general, the beery taste of him, the rasp of his awful moustache on the corner of her mouth. He was no worse or better a kisser than anyone else as far as she could tell from where she hovered, just outside her body (detached, objective). Then he had let go. </p><p>She'd stood, looking at the gap between them. Waiting for the next bit, where he wrenched off his shirt, and then hers. The embers low in her belly glowed hot anticipating it. <em>Perhaps she had learned something after all</em>, she'd thought, <em>perhaps it was growing on her like coffee or classical music</em>.</p><p>The space between them still gaped, and Beth had done what she always did with an empty board in front of her. She’d moved.</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>She understood the art of it only in retrospect. It was a conversation, if not a chess game. Moves and countermoves. A sentence spoken and a sentence heard. The others had done it wrong.</p><p>Besides, Beth liked to take things, more than to have them. She had not wanted to have a house very badly. She did not particularly care about the title of World Champion. All the same, she had loved the taking of them. That was the joy of sex: it was transient, gone after you had had it, and then you could take it again.</p><p>She <em>had</em> taken it again, from Benny, by near-force. Specifically, by showering and having a coffee in the kitchen, without getting dressed in between, and then by forgetting a bra under her sheerest blouses for a day and a half (Benny was a man of remarkable restraint, but even he could be broken in time). She had not slept on the air mattress again.</p><p>Beth liked--likes--to take, and maybe Benny had known, and let her; maybe she had played into his hands. Or maybe he'd simply had better instincts than the others. </p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>“Talk to me, Beth”</p><p>He had said it into her temple, after he had let her push him into the hinge-side of the doorframe and press her tongue into his mouth. </p><p>“You liked it,” she'd said, naming the thing that had sparked the heat building in her gut all evening. Beating him again and again, watching him bare his throat again and again for the knife.</p><p>“Liked what.”</p><p>His palms had been hot against her waist, under her shirt. He'd been panting.</p><p>“Being beaten.”</p><p>His hands had tightened, pulling her closer (he'd been hard, the feeling of it unmissable with his lean frame so close). His teeth had grazed her ear.</p><p>“Did you beat me? I must have missed it.”</p><p>It had all come easier to both of them after they were flushed and disheveled, raw with the taste of each other. It had been natural for her to bite him gently under the jaw, to hook her fingers over the edge of his belt. She had felt the tension ripple over him, the skin of his hip trembling against the front of her fingers. </p><p>It had been easy too, to let her finger run down into the hollow of his throat (still bared for her killer's hand), down onto his sternum, into the taut cradle of the chain that lay underneath his shirt. She had taken it out, had circled her finger once, twice, again, letting the gold links spin and tighten. Tugged, enough for him to feel it bite into the nape of his neck. </p><p>His breath had come out a little jagged, and that was all the encouragement she needed to pull him forward (by the hip, and by the chain). Then they were stumbling off the doorframe and into the room, shedding clothing like snakeskin, stealing open-mouthed kisses on whichever limb was nearest and barest. (Beth had bitten down into the meat of his shoulder with her hands still bound up in her blouse, and the heat under her skin had flared in response.)</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>Most men aren’t worth shit in bed, is the reality. Unsure how to be wanted, they can only want, a white-hot flash against the unfanned embers of her desire. She is embarrassed for them like she is for any other weak opponent, fated to lose in fifteen moves or less. Those before Benny (and the two or three after him) had all been disappointments; weak beer measured against vodka. </p><p>Cleo had been shatteringly good, she knows that with surety despite the drug-haze vignetting the edges of the memory. And the sight of Townes (who, by not wanting her, had made it possible for her to want him) still sets an odd flutter in her stomach when she first catches the flash of dark curls, darker eyes.</p><p>Still. She hadn’t fucked either of them on a balcony in Trieste, or a bathroom in Łódź, or--fuck. It doesn’t even matter where. </p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p><br/>
“There's no clock, Harmon."</p><p>He had been sitting on the bed underneath her, the skin of his thighs hot against hers. He'd caught her wrists just as her hands reached the waistline of his briefs.</p><p>“Hey. What do you wanna do?”</p><p>“I thought that was obvious.” Beth had twisted her hands in his grip, just to see if it was serious. His ring dug into the bone of her right wrist.</p><p>"Well, whatever it is. Slower is probably better." With a smirk of pure wickedness.</p><p>“Come here,” he'd said (as if she wasn't already on top of him), and draped himself back across the bed, moving easily in his rawboned body. Beth had crawled over him, ground her hips down over his, watching his eyes go half-mast and wide in the pupils.</p><p>"Jesus Christ."</p><p>He said it through gritted teeth, grabbing her thighs as if to steady himself. She'd leaned over him to kiss him; bent a little further than she needed so that her breasts pressed against his chest. His thigh had started shaking when she dragged herself against his erection, hips hovering an inch too close, an inch too far away. She'd set her mouth against the narrow column of his throat and felt the fire inside her rise as his hands dug into her hips in response, hot through the thin fabric of her underwear. </p><p>He’d kissed her (or she’d kissed him), rough and desperate with a clack of teeth, and his hands had skimmed over her ribcage to her breasts, thumbs circling over the flimsy cotton. The bra had been removed after that, in spite of, rather than because of, their combined effort.</p><p>She had come like that, riding the thigh he lifted between her knees with her hands knotted in his hair.</p><p>He'd rolled her over once she'd stopped shaking (or maybe before--she'd watched him put on a condom and take off her underwear through a forest-fire haze). And she'd watched him fuck her, with her knee over his shoulder and her heel in his back, the chain on his neck swaying with every thrust. When he’d shuddered to a halt, whispering a shaky curse into her collarbone, her spine had buzzed with the thrill of victory.</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>Even after months (six months, since Łódź?) the memory is sharp, the headspinning haze of it, the heat making her blood rise to the surface. She is inescapably aware of the alcohol, chiming its presence with every clink of a Cheltenham-cut glass. She is inescapably aware of him. She laces her hands under her chin and looks vacantly at the violently patterned carpet, follows it up the staircase that spirals up out of the dining room. There are no moves on the ceiling.</p><p>She stands anyway, balances her teacup primly on her book, and walks to the stairs (her route is only two tables short of perfect efficiency).  </p><p>He plays helplessly into her opening, not for the first time.</p><p>“Harmon. Didn't know you'd be here.” He’s alone with his board, staring at a sequence she knows he knows with pretended interest.</p><p>“Mm,” she says, with a small, tight smile. “Me neither.” </p><p>A stranger watching might buy it. The reigning World Champion and the (second) best chess player on the continent have nothing to prove in Ventura, California. </p><p>“I thought Poland was the last time, Beth.” Lower, still without looking at her.</p><p>“It was.” Her dress is cut deep in the back, and she sees Benny's eyes catch on the expanse of skin, sees him swallow.</p><p>“Right.” He takes off his hat, rakes his hair off his forehead and stretches a hand across his face to press his temples.  “Where's your room?”</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>~~~</p><p> </p><p>He looks resigned opening the door (Room 1103--top level, with a skylight that lets the teal-green evening fall down over the bed like a second comforter).</p><p>“Hi.”</p><p>“Hi, Benny.”</p><p>She's out of her clothes, mostly, except underthings and stockings. Someone was going to take them off, and Benny has a habit of ruining buttons. Beth is a pragmatist. Besides, she's in a bigass room with a wall-wide balcony looking down on the outdoor pool, breeze and dying sunlight creeping past the gauzy curtain through the open doors. It's like wearing a bikini on the beach, if you squint.</p><p>He bends over to pry off his boots; she throws back the heavy duvet and props herself against the headboard. Watches from there as Benny strips himself down to down to low slung jeans and the cluster of chains that shimmers over his heart.  “What?”</p><p>She raises her brows delicately.</p><p>“You're looking at me like you want to eat me raw.” He scrapes his hair out of his eyes, creasing his forehead. ”Not that I mind. Not the first man Elizabeth Harmon’s eaten alive, probably not the last.”</p><p>She narrows her eyes at him.</p><p>“What's <em>your</em> full name? Benedict?” She bites down a smirk. “Bennet?”</p><p>It's the closest she's ever gotten to asking about him, his childhood. She doesn't want her own asked about, and for all her disdain of the religious, Beth follows the Golden Rule to a letter.</p><p>He snorts. “None of those, thank God.” Settles himself between her knees, long limbs asprawl. Plants a kiss on the inside of her thigh. Rolls her underwear down her legs, rolls his eyes up to look at her.</p><p>“Ruben.” He wets his first two fingers on his tongue. “In case you want to scream it to the rooftops.”</p><p>“Mm.”</p><p>She feels him let out a breath that skims over her hipbone. “And I see you left the window open for just that purpose.”</p><p>“Guess so.”</p><p>“Fuck, you're already wet.”</p><p>She sighs at the ceiling and tilts her hips amiably at him. He kisses her, right where she wants him to, and she squirms under the unrelenting heat of it. “Say it,” he growls into the crease of her thigh. “So they can hear.” </p><p>She feels her lips tilt into a smile. Ruffles his hair. “No.”</p><p>Benny grumbles a complaint that she is unable to take seriously since he continues to eat her out, palms steady on her quavering knees. Beth stops him before he can make her come, crawls up toward the headboard.</p><p>“Lie down.”</p><p>He does, mouth still shining, and she throws a leg over his thighs, lining her fingers up with the furrows between his ribs. He groans when she gets him out of his jeans and into her hand, uncharacteristically loud. She steals a glance at the window, feeling her cheeks heat.</p><p>“You left it open.” His eyes glitter. </p><p>She gives him a poisonous look and gets up to close it (she is <em>not</em> repeating Trieste, once is enough). She hears the bed creak as he follows, probably to get a condom from what she knows by now is the left front pocket of his coat.</p><p>They fuck in bed, and then again on the kitchen counter (it's a huge room), and then Benny has a ridiculous fucking cigar on the balcony like the theatrical asshole he is while Beth runs herself a bath that's eighty percent soap-bubbles.</p><p>When she rolls into the bed beside him, damp and smelling like too-strong hotel lavender, his back is to her, moving evenly, and she thinks he's probably out. For all that he's got a talented tongue, he falls asleep fast like the rest of them. </p><p>“Ruben Watts,” she says, barely audible; reaching forward to add the lock of hair on his pillow back to the coil.</p><p>“Beth Harmon,” he whispers back, twisting in the sheets to look at the ceiling. Turns his head further around to look at her with his sparkling snake's eyes.</p><p>“I know that being forthcoming is not your first instinct.” (She knows the deadpan look he’s wearing without turning to see it). “But I think since I answered yours, you owe me a question too.”</p><p>He clears his throat, pauses to let the seriousness settle.</p><p>“Am I the best you ever had?” </p><p>The corner of his mouth twitches.</p><p>“Fuck you,” she whispers, but her lips curl anyway. “That was the last time.”</p><p>“Hm.”</p><p>He presses a kiss into her temple before he rolls away.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>It's like this. I think their snarky vibe is immaculate and even if they couldn't last as a couple they could go for a decade or four as toxic friends-with-benefits. I love Beth. And the implication that this mean, scrawny man is canonically Good At Sex? Peerless.</p><p>I just think they're neat. </p><p>Leave a comment if you're feelin it &lt;3 and hang out w me on <a href="https://athousandvictories.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> if that's your thing</p></blockquote></div></div>
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